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Today the most fertile ground for entrepreneurship is shifting from Silicon Valley to San Francisco. And that is where Microsoft must move if it hopes to break free of the yearning for a pension that keeps its people from the kind of thinking and action that spurs innovation that could accelerate Microsoft's revenue growth.

Moving Microsoft's headquarters to San Francisco would be met with kicking and screaming from local government officials and its roughly 40,000 Seattle area employees who have comfortable lives in the Seattle area.

It would probably cost Microsoft billions of dollars to make such a move -- but it has $83 billion in cash. Here are some rough assumptions:

Moving costs: $900 million. $30,000 each for the 30,000 who choose to move;

Real estate: $402 million a year. This assumes that Microsoft could lease enough space -- six million square feet (2oo square feet for 30,000 employees) and paid Twitter's $67 a square foot. Microsoft would eventually sell or lease its empty offices in the Seattle area. Assuming that space could not be leased, Microsoft would have to build which would cost billions of dollars.

There would clearly be significant turnover from people who did not want to move. But some of that might open positions for people who are more entrepreneurial.

Attracting and motivating that talent in San Francisco would require Nadella to manage differently. One way to do that might be to identify, say, 20 huge market opportunities and invest in five or 10 startups that would try to develop innovative products to take market share in each of those markets.

Microsoft could divert some of its R&D money to fund these companies and possibly bring venture capital firms in as partners. Most would fail, but some could develop products that would gain market share rapidly. For these winners, Microsoft could help by selling the startup's product to its big customers.

If it is serious about innovation it needs to move where the innovation is happening so that its new business creators will be in entrepreneurial soil that values betting big on transforming enormous markets instead of playing bureaucratic games to hang on to a comfortable job until retirement.

If moving to San Francisco spurred Microsoft to innovate, its revenue growth could accelerate, and that would boost the value of its stock.